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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29889291">A conversation in Aeor</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElienRey/pseuds/ElienRey'>ElienRey</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Minor Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:09:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29889291</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElienRey/pseuds/ElienRey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m a little worried for Essek.” </p>
<p>Caleb apologizes. Essek is nosy. Spoilers for 127, 128.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Essek Thelyss &amp; Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>133</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A conversation in Aeor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I need to apologize,” he hears Caleb’s quiet murmur behind him, and at first assumes he must be speaking to someone else, anyone else, but as the silence draws on, Essek turns to find Caleb gazing just left of his shoulder. He is tense, as he has been since the Mighty Nein returned, and there is no one else he could have been addressing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry?” Essek says, his steady glide faltering. Caleb’s own steps quicken slightly to fall even with Essek.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” says Caleb, but he doesn’t say any more for an almost comically long interval, enough that Essek thinks this strange interaction is at an end until he continues, “For, for putting you in danger.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In danger?” he mimics, brain stuttering to a stop. Essek is indeed in danger. Some of it by his own hand, some by happenstance, and some because he knows the Mighty Nein. But what has </span>
  <em>
    <span>Caleb </span>
  </em>
  <span>done? What new threat does he have to fear in the dead of this Eiselcross night, creeping through ancient, mysterious ruins?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know you told me I should not use dunamantic spells in the Empire, but-” he cuts himself off, and Essek feels his heart stop for a moment. He knows the Mighty Nein have been up to their usual chaos, have managed to snag very powerful magical items, have told him the Assembly is on their trail just as they are on Essek’s, but- “I used a spell of yours in perhaps the worst circumstance possible,” Caleb continues, voice flat. “There is no excuse for my carelessness, except that I needed to kill quickly in a, a high stress environment.” His lips quirk in what might be a smile, if it were less brittle. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In front of an Assembly member.” Essek puts it together, slots this confession into the bits and pieces of information he’s collected regarding their recent misadventures.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” says Caleb, and then his mouth shuts with a finality that suggests he’d rather not say anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Caleb,” says Essek, very carefully, “in which Assembly member’s presence did you use one of my spells? And </span>
  <em>
    <span>which </span>
  </em>
  <span>spell? I didn’t teach you high level battle magic.” His panic is clearing now he knows the threat, at least a little, and bafflement is trickling in to take its place. Did Caleb use resonant echo to cast fireball? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not in his presence,” Caleb quickly clarifies, “and you didn’t teach me this spell, so I am not sure what you would call it.” He flicks a hand in sheepish apology, and Essek finds himself reeling for the second time in as many minutes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s my spell, but I didn’t teach it to you?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, no.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So - who taught you, Caleb?” Essek is hard pressed to keep the annoyance out of his tone. Obviously, Caleb does not want to admit what he’s done. Essek can relate.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No one. I saw you perform the spell when you killed your prisoner with a gravity - well? Sinkhole? Again, I don’t know the term you would use.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I -” Essek cuts himself off, remembering the blood spurting in bright red rivulets from Caleb’s throat, his own fist closing as the scourger crumpled into a ball of flesh and bone. Yes. That would certainly leave an impression in the Empire. “You saw me perform that spell </span>
  <em>
    <span>once</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, you gave me a good grounding,” Caleb says, dismissive. “To answer your first question, it was Trent Ikithon. I believe he has his suspicions as to who has been teaching me dunamancy. I thought it only fair to warn you, and apologize for -” he cuts himself off, a hand going to his forehead, the first sign of outright emotion he’s shown since the beginning of the conversation. He stops speaking then, and Essek finds himself at a loss. Caleb has not actually apologized, but even his offer of one is more than Essek has ever had before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>People don’t feel the need to apologize to the Shadowhand of the Queen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Essek does not know whether he should accept or nurse the embers of his annoyance into outright anger and resentment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He settles on logic instead. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Caleb, I very much doubt your indiscretions have resulted in any change to my circumstances. I was hunted before you chose to flaunt your dunamantic skills, and I will be hunted long after. This, however,” he holds the amulet out from the folds of his mantle, Caleb’s eyes sliding sideways to look at him. “Is going to help keep me out of their assassins’ view and may very well extend my life past what I thought would be a matter of months.” It isn’t a perfect solution. There are more mundane ways of tracking targets, finding out the movements of faraway individuals, but it would certainly make the Assembly’s job a little more difficult.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m glad,” says Caleb. “But I am still sorry that I broke my word to you. You trusted me, after a fashion, and I let you down.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Essek couldn’t help but laugh at the irony, even as he shook his head in immediate rebuttal. “Did you forget who you are speaking to? I’ve been lying to you, in one form or another, since the moment we met.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That doesn’t mean I should do the same to you. And I did </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>intend to lie. I try to keep my word, most of the time. Archmages trying to invade my body, that is where I draw the line. Or when I am starving on the street,” he adds as an afterthought. Essek decides to let that be for now because the word “archmage” has sent all his alarm bells ringing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ikithon tried to invade your body?” he asks, bewildered and slightly sickened.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, no, no, he is far more interested in invading minds. No, Halas, whom I believe we spoke of before, I made a deal with him that if he answered three of my questions regarding Aeor, the Cognouza Ward, and the Somnovum, he would get a chance at freedom from his imprisonment.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A chance you robbed him of?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, you could say I did keep my word. He certainly tried.” Caleb gives him another brittle smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How - reckless of you.” Essek had been about to say “suicidal”, but he is afraid the word is too accurate, that something has fundamentally come loose in Caleb which may never be put back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you surprised?” Caleb is sly now, almost teasing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not at all,” Essek replies, trying to muster his own reserves of familiarity from the dregs of his anxiety. They had once had a tentative ease to their interactions which had been swept away by that fateful party in Nicodranas. “If there’s one thing I associate with the Mighty Nein, it’s reckless abandon. Calculated risks,” he amends with a genuine smile. Caleb’s own face falls, and he looks to his shoes, trudging carefully along icy pathways. The others are spread out around them, keeping careful watch on all sides, the two wizards pushed to the middle. “Weaklings to the center,” Veth had hollered when they’d set out, glaring up at both of them, and Caleb had gone without protest. Essek had tried to make his own way before reluctantly falling into his assigned position.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t know whether anyone is in earshot, but Caleb doesn’t seem to care if they hear. “Caleb,” he starts, more hesitant than he’d like. “Could I ask you a question?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can’t promise an answer,” is the rather clipped reply, and Essek is reminded that trust needs to be earned. Even so, he shoulders ahead, unerring curiosity driving him forward.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What exactly is your relationship to Trent Ikithon? You said you were in training, as one of the Empire’s assassins? Was that true? Or were you trying a very ill advised ploy to gain access to the scourger?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That is not </span>
  <em>
    <span>a </span>
  </em>
  <span>question, that is a lot of questions,” Caleb points out with nothing but cold logic. Essek shrugs, tries to catch Caleb’s eye, for all he doesn’t want to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pick one, then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re very presumptuous.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Says the human who asked a drow his country was at war with to teach him sacred magic.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was true,” says Caleb with a shuttered glare, although he does not seem truly angry. Merely tired. Essek nods, not expecting Caleb to continue, but to his surprise he does, “And Trent Ikithon was my teacher, many years ago.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your teacher.” Essek had expected as much, but he almost stops in surprise as Caleb continues.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My teacher, my mentor, my master, my abuser, my torturer, my, my father. I remember, when I was first chosen for his special instruction-” Caleb’s lip curls at the words, and Essek dares not breath lest Caleb stop this sudden torrent of information. “When I was first chosen, I remember wishing my own father could be more like Ikithon. Intelligent, powerful, important.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I… know the feeling.” Essek feels the dim patterns of what might be shame as he thinks of his own father, dead in Bazzoxan, his own disappointment in a progenitor that was never enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We were nothing but poor farmers,” Caleb continues, “what Ikithon would call the sheep in need of protecting, manipulating. Except we’d been elevated, given the keys to power and knowledge.” He shakes his head, fists clenching at his sides. “So </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He looks at Essek then, and it takes all of Essek’s willpower not to flinch from the hatred in his eyes. “It is almost worse, what we did believing we were right and just and good. At least you committed your atrocities with nothing but an unchecked need to know. We, we were so foolish we could not even see who we were hurting, the innocents we were killing.” He looks away, mercifully, and Essek has to look at the ground, pretending to pick his way over difficult terrain, for all that he is floating over most of it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Such notions of morality have seemed rather foolish to me,” Essek admits. He has no idea what Caleb wants from him now. Surely not absolution, a pat on the back, a </span>
  <em>
    <span>hug? </span>
  </em>
  <span>No, he would go to the Mighty Nein for that. Perhaps he merely wants commiseration. “But many believe it is better to follow good and do bad than to follow your own way and do the same.” He thinks again of his father and then of his brother, both of whom followed their duty to places where death was likely for no other reason than a love of country and queen. Essek had thought them short sighted, idiotic, weak, before he’d met the Mighty Nein. Now he is tramping through the ruins of an arcane city, bent on stopping an apocalypse, on the run from almost every major power on the continent, and death has never been more looming. He won’t even be reborn should he fall here. There will be no chance to continue his studies; all of his research will have been for nothing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Many believe,” Caleb repeats. “What do you believe?” He doesn’t sound interested in the response, but Essek is beginning to see some of the pathways his mind is taking. A part of him is somewhere else and has been since the Nein teleported back into Eiselcross.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A few months ago, I would have told you I believe in knowledge and its pursuit. Today, here, now,” he gestures at the vast ceiling above them, the remnants of pillars shooting tall above the ice. “I have no idea.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good answer,” says Caleb, and starts to pull away, to trudge ahead of Essek, but Essek stops him with an unforgivable presumption, a hand to Caleb’s arm. Caleb has done so to him, but he has the excuse of being a foreigner. He doesn’t know what it means. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait,” he says, more firm than he feels, and Caleb stops, pivoting toward him, face carefully blank. “I think I should know, since I’m in the middle of this, what Ikithon has planned for you. Does he wish to imprison you and the others for what you did or kill you outright?” Caleb still has not shaken him off, and they stay poised in some obscene imitation of an embrace, Essek’s fingers wrapped around Caleb’s forearm. He can’t feel the heat from his body, not with all the layers they’re wearing, but he feels a phantom shock in his palms and through his fingertips. It’s been so long since he’s touched anyone like this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know,” says Caleb, low and soft. “I cannot guess as to his intentions. He has said that everything I have done for the past fifteen years has been by his hand, that my escape from him was planned in some sick attempt to make me stronger. Suffering brings strength,” he adds, as if explaining the rudimentary properties of magic to a five year old.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No it doesn’t,” says Essek, a knee jerk denial of an obvious untruth. “And that sounds like nonsense to me. When did you escape? From where did you escape?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They were holding me in the sanitarium, where, where we stole,” he taps the necklace around Essek’s neck, and Essek realizes they are standing far too close for an ordinary conversation. He can sense the Mighty Nein’s watchful gazes on them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How long? When?” Essek doesn’t know why this is important, but it is. He needs Caleb to see that that man has nothing to do with any part of Caleb’s successes. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Is this jealousy</span>
  </em>
  <span>? he thinks as Caleb stares at him in surprise. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Is it because Caleb is </span>
  </em>
  <span>my </span>
  <em>
    <span>student, that I’d like his successes and his genius to be my doing?</span>
  </em>
  <span> No. Essek doesn’t have that kind of delusional thinking in him. Caleb has reverse engineered a spell from </span>
  <em>
    <span>one </span>
  </em>
  <span>casting, from nothing but the most basic instruction in dunamancy. Caleb’s successes are no one’s but his own.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I escaped from that place six years, one month, three days, two hours, fifteen minutes, and twenty-three, no, twenty-four seconds ago,” says Caleb with his unerring precision. “As for how long I was in Vergesson, I have only dim memories of my time there. Eleven years is my best guess.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Eleven years,” Essek hisses. Is this what righteous anger feels like? He has never cared enough about anyone to feel like this before, a red hot burning building in his chest. What a </span>
  <em>
    <span>waste</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “Imagine what you could have been without a teacher so careless as to break his pupils rather than let them grow. Look at what you have done in barely a year of study. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eleven years</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he repeats, uncaring that Caleb is looking at him as if he has grown another head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Essek-” he starts, but Essek cuts him off with another presumptuous squeeze of his arm. If there were other drow here, they would be looking away in embarrassment at such a display.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have met Trent Ikithon, Caleb. The only thing you have to thank him for is wasting your time.” With that he lets Caleb go, afraid his emotions will be all too visible on his face. He glides away, trying to focus on where he is going, trying not to think of Caleb’s startled gaze, boring into his back.</span>
</p>
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